Roadkill cuisine

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Roadkill cuisine is preparing and eating roadkill, animals hit by vehicles and found along roads.

It is a practice engaged in by a small subculture in the United States, southern Canada, the United Kingdom, and other Western countries as well as in other parts of the world.^{[citation needed]} It is also a subject of humor and urban legend.^{[citation needed]}

Large animals such as cattle, pigs, and including deer, elk, moose, and bear are frequently struck in some parts of the United States, as well as smaller animals such as birds, poultry animals, seafood animals, and including squirrels, opossum, raccoons, skunks. Fresh kill is preferred and parasites are a concern, so the kill is typically well cooked. Advantages of the roadkill diet, apart from its free cost, are that the animals that roadkill scavengers eat are naturally high in vitamins and proteins with lean meat and little saturated fat, and generally free of additives and drugs.^[1]

Almost 1.3 million deer are hit by vehicles each year in the US.^[2] If the animal is not obviously suffering from disease, the meat is no different from that obtained by hunting. The practice of eating roadkill is legal, and even encouraged in some jurisdictions, while it is tightly controlled or restricted in other areas.^{[citation needed]} Roadkill eating is often mocked in pop culture, where it is associated with stereotypes of rednecks and uncouth persons.^{[citation needed]}